Red Rubicon
by Corpse In Bright Clothing
Summary: Lawrence's screams; Adam's key; the changes they make. Focuses on several characters and spans all movies.
1. Genesis

_Author's Notes: This is the Saw story I've had mention of on my profile for months. I've been working on it for a long time and it seems I'm finally getting serious. This story starts with one slight change from what happens in the first movie, and forms an alternate storyline that you'll find is largely different from the movie canon. This will focus on many characters and span through all of the movies. I would also like to first give you a few of the first movie's quotes from the good doctor, Lawrence Gordon:_

_"There's no point in yelling. I already tried that."_

_"Use your shirt." (Because, _darn-it!_)  
_

_"Every possible angle has been pre- thought out by him."_

* * *

**Chapter 1: Genesis**

* * *

A frightful young woman timidly knocked on a large door before sliding it open with a loud squeak. She saw the dead man and under his instruction she took the unconscious young man, her catch, chained his left leg and eased his body into a rusty tub currently filling with water. She breathed shallowly, standing over him hauntingly.

Once the dead man appeared to be finished with his massive head wound, he solemnly said, "It's time to start our game."

The dead man turned to his young apprentice, instructed her to tie the key to his ankle. However, she only tossed the key haphazardly onto the chest of the man in the tub. It was then the dead man saw her carelessness for other human life - a slight disregard for the rules; that would have to be tested another time.

The young woman turned the bath faucet off and grabbed the boots she had removed from the young man. Then she watched, with trepidation and morbid curiosity, as the dead man injected himself with something he claimed would "slow my heart rate; relax my muscles." Next she grabbed a duffel bag and an emptied bucket of what appeared to be blood and carried them to the door.

The dead man's young apprentice watched as he slowly lowered himself to lay in the blood and the death he apparently belonged to – a gun in one hand and a tape player in the other. Then, all movement desisted, other than the unconscious young man sliding under the bath water, and the young woman flipping the lights off, sliding the door shut, and leaving the bathroom in darkness.

It was in this darkness a third man awoke a few moments later.

It was a strange lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding. His bed wasn't this uncomfortable, nor his bedroom ever quite this dark. He worked himself into a sitting position, and below him his hands could feel ... tile or something. Then, he was assaulted by smell; it was just nasty and oddly, disturbingly familiar. ... He must be in a dream; he fought all reason to make himself believe that.

He made to stand up, and it was then he felt the pull on his leg; he sat back down. Full of question, he moved a hand down his leg, his right leg, to find it was chained above his ankle.

What?

"Hello?"

The man tugged, pushed, pulled at the shackle with no result. With urgency he ran his hands up the length of the chain to feel it attached to ... a pipe?

He could sense a sort of delicate, suspicion-filled anger creep into his voice. "Who's done this to me? Where am I?" He received no answer.

He fell his voice to a whisper. "Anyone?" Another silence greeted him.

The darkness bore in on the man, then. He was absolutely nowhere, he was alone; there was nothing he could do. And it was in that this man had a taste of true terror.

He screamed. "Answer me!"

In the silence that followed that scream, he felt stripped even further, having bared his soul to the terrible unknown. And his body shook with the terror. Then, he roughly pulled in as much air as he could manage, and he screamed for his life.

Naturally, the bathing young man awoke for the screaming; the sound was dulled due to his ears being underwater, but it managed to penetrate his skull.

He opened his eyes tiredly, then blinked furiously. It was bright; all he could see was a white blur; there was something on his face. In sitting up, lifting his head heavy with water, the man caused the key to fall to his chest for the second time. Instinctively, the man made to bat away the object in darkness, but upon contact his fingers closed around it.

The third man had silenced. He'd heard noise from a distance away; he had no clue how close it was; it sounded like water, splashing, sloshing. Where was he?

"Hello?" the third man called.

The young man sat drenched in water with some kind of light in his hand and zero clue at this point. He said, "Uh. Hello?"

Well that was unmistakably a voice; there was someone with him; he wasn't alone. ...

"Where am I?"

There was that voice again. ... He'd been hoping they would know where this was. ... But wouldn't that mean he had brought him here?

"Hello! Are you there?"

This guy didn't seem very patient, and with no more than a short pause, he carried on.

"What kind of a joke is this? This isn't funny. Where the-"

"Hey! Hey! I don't know where we are either." Silence followed, but the third man soon spoke again to ask, "We- Who are you?"

The young man declined to answer. After a few moments he asked, "Are there lights?"

His reply: "I don't know; let me check."

The third man managed standing, groped through darkness to feel mostly more pipes, find the wall behind them, and finally flip the light switch, in a few quick moments. The bright fluorescents that flashed on then were enough to momentarily blind the third man. For the young man - after studying the glowing item he held since awakening, along with being in the tub where less light reached - the fluorescents were only cause to blink a few times. Of course it was only then the young man realized he was in a bathtub, and therefore also a bathroom.

He started taking things in quickly. In his hand - that was a key - and above his left ankle, a chain - companions perhaps? Then he figured how rather disgusting his current location was; he covered his nose and mouth with the back of his hand. Oh, and to his left he saw - the dead man.

"Holy shit!" he cursed loudly. His understanding of the situation went from 'what the fuck?' to 'FUCKFUCKFUCK!' In freaking out, he flailed a little and unplugged the bath drain. ...

The young man was hit with an overwhelming urge to get out of there. He tried the key, and - thank _God_—it worked; he was released from the shackle. His breath quickened. He heaved himself out of the tub, slipped a little on the tile, and found the wall with his hands, steadied himself. "_Out_._ Out_," he muttered, manic. He hadn't made it far beyond the tub, however, before he heeded the other man's shouts of 'stop!'

"Of the three of us," he questioned, "why am I the only one chained up?"

The younger man blinked at that. "No, uh. Um. I- I was chained, too; th- There was a key."

"You had a _key_?"

"Yeah. Uh-" the younger man turned back to the tub. Then, he saw how close the key was to the unplugged drain and realized how easily he could have lost the key.

In the meantime, the third man had opted for seeing if there was another key around him. He looked in the corner and along the floor by the walls, then he reached into his pockets.

He pulled out a white envelope that read his name in all large, boldfaced, uppercase letters.

With key in hand, the younger man turned and headed across the room. Noticing the envelope, he commented, "'Lawrence'?"

"Yeah. My name." Lawrence opened his envelope. "What's yours?"

At this point seeing no reason in not telling Lawrence, he answered, "Adam."

Lawrence didn't have any reaction to that. In the envelope had been three small objects; two he didn't even care about, because the third was a _key_. As he moved to try it on his shackle, Lawrence wondered aloud: "Why would someone go to the trouble of bringing us here, putting us in chains, and then go ahead and give us the keys to those chains?"

While reaching into his pocket for his own envelope, Adam mused, "Eh, I don't know. Maybe there's some twisted game outside they want us to play."

The dead man could only laugh inside and think, _"The game's right here, Adam, the game's right here."_

"... Didn't work? Try mine."

Neither key worked to free Lawrence. He stared at the floor with his face in his palm. "How am I supposed to get out?"

Then Lawrence remembered there had been more in his envelope. He turned to them; there was one bullet, and a tape that said, "PLAY ME."

A recorded voice - Adam had put his tape into the dead man's player - spoke into the bathroom.

"_Rise and shine, Adam. You're probably wondering where you are. I'll tell you where you might be; you might be in the room that you die in._

"_Up until now you've simply sat in the shadows, watching others live out there lives. But what do voyeurs see, when they look into the mirror? Now I see you as a strange mix of someone angry, yet apathetic - but mostly just pathetic. So are you going to watch yourself die today, Adam, or do something about it?_"


	2. Exodus

**Exodus**

* * *

After a moment or so of suspicious eye-darting, Adam stuttered out, "Th-this room? I don't get it. Why would I die in this room? And that's just … vague." Pensive, Adam stared downward at his feet. Then, suddenly his breathing became hurried and his manner more manic. "This—whoever this is—is wrong. I'm not gonna die in here. Because I can just leave."

"No you can't," Lawrence grumbled.

"Oh yeah? And what are you gonna do to stop me? There's nothing. There's nothing you ca-"

"You can't leave," he reprimanded Adam, "because you're the only one who can get me out of here."

Adam just whirled his head in one direction and then another, and questioned, "So? So what. I can just leave you here."

Lawrence was fighting to stay calm in the face of Adam's flightiness. What could he say to keep Adam from leaving him alone? What?

"What about the guilt?"

"Wha-? Oh, that's great." Adam nodded, all sarcasm. "An emotion I don't even have yet is going to keep me from leaving—_the room that I might die in_. Yeah."

He wasn't moving, though.

Lawrence studied him for a minute, before deciding to ask for the tape player.

"_Doctor Gordon._

"_This is your wake up call. Every day of your working life you have given people the news that they're gonna die soon. Now you will be the cause of death. Your aim in this game is to kill Adam. You have until six on the clock to do it._

"_There's a man in the room with you. When there's that much poison in your blood, the only thing left to do is shoot yourself._"

The dead man thought of when he received the news of his cancer, and his drive off a cliff. Then he heard himself cough on the tape.

"_There are ways to win this, hidden all around you. Just remember: X—marks the spot for the treasure. If you do not kill Adam by six, then Allison and Diana will die, Doctor Gordon, and I'll leave you in this room to rot._

"_Let the game begin._"

Finally, Lawrence did hear the words "follow your heart" end the tape in a whisper.

"Follow your heart?"

Adam looked at the man in front of him who had just been assigned the task of killing him. He thought to feel fear at the idea. But it all just felt unforgivably stupid, considering he was on his feet and free to walk out the door. That was, if the door wasn't locked, which felt stronger a possibility by the second. Adam should just run, though, run rather than be-

Adam was yanked from his thoughts as Lawrence shouted and pointed him to a brown heart smeared onto a toilet.

"That must be what the tape meant."

Adam gave him a look.

"Well go look!" Lawrence insisted.

"Why should I?" Adam asked, obstinate.

"Well, it's not as if I've laid a trap in the toilet!" he cried, getting impatient. "Maybe there's something in there that can help both of us get out of here."

Adam could have argued that he himself didn't need any help getting out. But Lawrence was right on two counts: just maybe there was something they could use to get him out, too; and the guilt really wouldn't sit right with him. So he complied, for once.

From his advantageous position as an unchained man standing over the toilet he opted to remove the lid. Subsequently, he removed a black bag from inside and checked the bag's contents.

"What is it?" Lawrence asked. He was hopeful, even if it didn't look like there was a key in there.

Adam revealed a hacksaw before dropping the wet trash bag.

Lawrence stared for a few moments, then shuffled around, and finally said, "Bring it here; I think I might be able to saw through this chain; bring it here!"

Adam silently turned away, walked back to what had been his own chain.

"What are you doing?"

He knelt down, grabbed it, and tried cutting through it with the saw.

"Will you quit messing around and just bring-"

"_No!_" Adam shouted all of a sudden and shot up. Then he scratched the back of his head and said, "It won't even do anything, anyway."

Lawrence stared for another moment and then started huffing through his nose. His eyes darted, and then he muttered, "What else did he say?" He picked up the tape player again.

He rewound. "_Let the game begin._" And rewound. "_And Diana will die._" He whimpered; rewound. "_X marks the spot._" He gasped.

"There! What could that mean?"

"Well, considering what we got from 'follow your heart,' we should find a big brown 'X' and then something else you'll try to kill me with."

Lawrence would have told him to quit being smart, but Adam's attitude was somewhat understandable, and he let it go as his eyes perused the room. He continued looking around, racking his brain for possible alternative meanings, until as he was urging himself to think his brain refused to do anything; it had practically numbed. Looking again at Adam who stood simply and seemed to be idly glancing around, Lawrence almost came out with, "Find anything?" But he realized the answer was obvious. … Then again, perhaps it wasn't, and maybe Adam was being smart in a literal sense.

He decided to ask anyway.

Adam immediately came back with, "No; you?"

Lawrence's eyes repeatedly swept the floor in front of him, and in a low voice he answered, "No."

Lawrence could feel himself growing more desperate. He had come to a conclusion, and it was one he didn't like. There was something he could do, and he knew once he vocalized the idea he would have to go through with it or forget it. Out of other ideas, he couldn't just sit on it.

So he needed Adam to leave.

"You know what?" he spoke up, and Adam's eyes flashed over. "Why don't you go outside and have a look?"

"What?"

"Y'know. See what's out there. Maybe you can find something to break me out of this chain—or a phone! Or if you can escape you can send help. Something."

"You're saying I should leave now?" Adam asked, sounding suspicious or as if he didn't understand. "After how hard you had to try to keep me here?"

"Yes," Lawrence pronounced, trying to remain patient. "I am. Isn't that what you wanted? Just look. Open the door and look out."

Adam just looked at him for a minute, unmoving, and Lawrence stared back.

Then, he just shrugged. "Alright." He headed toward the door. "If you say so." And as he stood in front of it, he could see it had no handles or holds of any kind. He placed his palms upon the wooden door and pushed. Finally, it slid open in Lawrence's direction.

Adam groaned, covered his nose. As bad as the smell had been in the bathroom he had managed getting used to it, but he found it smelled terrible outside as well, and for opening the door and moving the air around, the smell hit him again.

And as he had been expecting something different, as after all they were in a bathroom which is a room all houses have, he was surprised by what he found outside the door. He burst out with the lightest laughter. "We're in the sewers."

He looked back at Lawrence for a second, then glanced at the whole bathroom, before he wordlessly walked out.

* * *

_Author's Notes: I don't know if it's necessary and regret having to say this, but I'd like to prevent being told Adam could not have opened the door._

_Exhibit A: Lawrence only pushed the door in the wrong direction. Exhibits B&C: In Saw II when Amanda and Daniel run to the bathroom, and in the flashback in Saw III of Amanda taking Adam into the bathroom-no way of locking the door is seen. Exhibit D: In Saw III Eric leaves the bathroom. Oh look, and it's Adam's turn, finally._


End file.
